SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (47 page)

When his hip reached the floor of the lock,
he brought his feet beneath him and swept his free hand until he
touched the shackle. Where was its keyhole? He ran his fingers over
the converged C-arms, then rubbed the base with his thumb. The
chain must have been twisted when Nicky closed the cuff, because
the keyhole was facing his foot. As he reached the key around to
find it, he snagged a link of chain and the key jerked out of his
fingers. In disbelief, he snatched at the chain with an open palm,
then swung his hand through the water below it, hoping to catch the
key before it settled into the silt. He touched only water. His
head throbbed and he almost gagged. He saw himself on an icy
mountain ridge, taking a single, false step and beginning to slide,
confronting the reality as he accelerated that he had passed the
point of no return. His lungs were burning and he needed air.
Fuck!

He sprung skyward, kicking hard and
thrusting his arms. This time his mouth barely reached the surface
and he took a breath of watery air. Eyes directed up, he couldn’t
see the lock walls, but the sound and turbulence of flowing water
had diminished. The lock might not fill much further. He dropped
back to the bottom and gathered himself.

There was a second key. If it opened the
toolbox, he could dump out the contents and try to tread water
despite its weight. Or maybe he could drag the box to the gate and
find a way to climb it. He dug the remaining key out of his pocket,
then traced the chain to the handle of the toolbox. His entire body
burned with lactic acid and fatigue as he stroked the box in search
of the lock plate. Where was it? Here. He brought his fingers
together and attempted to insert the key, pressing it against the
box as he adjusted its position. It slipped into the lock! He
pushed it in fully, then tried to twist it left and right. The key
refused to turn.

No! He twisted harder but couldn’t turn it.
Was the lock rusted? Broken? Fuck! He let go, set his feet against
the lock floor, and sprung toward the surface again, keeping his
arms at his side and exhaling as he rose. The chain stopped him as
the crown of his head broke the surface. He kicked violently with
his free leg, thrust hard with his arms and hands, and felt the
toolbox rise from the lock floor. As his mouth neared the surface,
he thrashed harder. Close, closer, a breath. How many more times
could he surface before his strength gave out? When he reached the
bottom again, he ignored the box and rested, tethered underwater.
Thoughtless seconds later he fought his way up for another breath
and screamed.

***

Kelsey opened her eyes toward the roots of
the trees and saw stars. They spun and receded as the dark trunks
of the swamp oaks took shape. She rolled onto her back and raised
her right hand tentatively to her warm, sticky scalp. The bleeding
had stopped and the blood was drying now, but it had run freely
down her temple, dripped onto her neck, and pooled in the hollow of
her ear. She traced the stained skin lightly with her fingers.
Someone had screamed in the distance a minute ago. She looked up at
the canoe rack and saw a single looming hull on its uppermost arms.
The two lowest slots were empty.

Shards of memory fell back into place. There
had still been daylight when she walked over to examine the rack
with the missing canoe. She had seen the wire cutters lying on the
ground. And then as she was kneeling to pick them up, she’d heard a
footstep and turned to see the iron rod diving toward her head.
She’d flinched and ducked, and the bar had grazed her scalp and
slammed into her shoulder.

Lying on the beaten grass between the canoe
rack and the trees, she gingerly raised her right arm. A bolt of
pain shot through her shoulder and neck. She closed her eyes and
lowered her arm to the ground. Her throat felt dry and she tried to
swallow. Another scream rose and echoed from a nearby well. She
opened her eyes, propped her left hand against the ground and sat
up. The humid air seemed chilly but the sweater she had tied around
her waist was gone. Remembering what she had come for, she
staggered to her feet. The canoe rack reeled before her and she
leaned against it to regain her balance. Then she walked unsteadily
across the lot toward the gates of Swains Lock. To confirm the
truth of Whites Ferry. And so it wouldn’t happen again.

***

Suspended underwater, Vin felt himself
slipping into a world between the living and the dead. The lock was
quiet now, the water over nine feet deep. He realized that if the
canal were still in use, the water in the lock and the level
upstream would have been two feet higher and he wouldn’t be able to
reach the surface. He could barely reach it now. He had refined his
technique, but his exhausted body was burning its last reserves of
energy after hours of exertion and fear. The skin around his ankle
was flayed and abraded from the cuff. And he was cold. All he
wanted was to breathe, and it almost didn’t matter anymore whether
the breath was air or water. Just to inhale, exhale, and forget
about the fight.

He dropped into a crouch on the lock floor
and shot toward the surface like a hungry fish, flutter-kicking and
driving with his arms as his mouth stretched for a breath from the
ocean of air overhead. But now his shackled ankle flinched from the
pain of kicking and its reticence left him short; his nose was
still underwater when he stalled and began falling back. His lungs
caught fire and he was compelled to exhale as he descended.

He felt as if his brain was being squeezed
like a grapefruit for denying his body an underwater breath. I
can’t! I’ll drown! Try for the surface again! A roaring arose in
his ears and it seemed as if the water was beginning to move. This
is it, he thought. The flood is here. It’s washing downriver,
covering everything in its path. It’s here to bury me in Swains
Lock. He sensed now that he’d come full circle, to the foot of a
great turning wheel that would grind him into the past, uniting him
with his forebears while rolling in place, raining down generations
of the living, claiming and recycling the dead.

He fell back into a crouch at the bottom,
head and lungs throbbing, every strand afire. Fuck it. My body and
mind are lost and I have nothing left to lose. He shot again toward
the surface, kicking and thrashing through the pain, and his mouth
broke the skin of the water for a breath. He inhaled and fell to
the bottom where he hunched like an ancient amphibian. Water flowed
across his back and shoulders and uncounted seconds passed before
he sprung skyward again. This time his whole head emerged and he
managed two breaths.

Falling again, he became aware the lock was
draining. He pushed for the surface and was able to tread water and
breathe without lifting the box. A woman with disheveled
honey-colored hair and blood stains on her face and neck was
standing on the lock wall, looking down at him with a ragged smile.
He tried to smile back but tears filled his eyes instead. He
blinked to see more clearly and drew a grateful breath. It was
Kelsey Ainge.

Chapter 38
Revisiting

Sunday, September 7, 1997

When his feet touched ground at the base of
the rock face at Carderock, Vin pulled slack into the belay rope
and opened his hand to reveal a gleaming gold coin in the center of
his palm.

“You have learned well, grasshopper,” Kelsey
said.

“You did a lousy job of hiding it.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it. I just wanted
to put it in a challenging spot. To make sure you didn’t wimp out
and take the novice route.”

“What if I had?” Vin said, untying the rope
from his climbing harness. “That’s a five-hundred-dollar coin. You
would have had to climb back up yourself and get it.”

“I had faith in you.”

He swept his hair back from his sweating
forehead and smiled. “Be careful when you do that. I’ve learned
that people aren’t always what they seem.”

Kelsey laughed and pulled the belay rope
down. “So I’ve heard. You didn’t seem like a budding research
historian when you moved here.” Her smile dissolved when she saw
the distant look in Vin’s eyes. “Are you thinking about Nicky?”

“I was, for a second. It’s been a year now,
but I keep expecting to see her somewhere. Maybe passing on the
sidewalk with someone else. Or across a crowded theater.” He looked
up at the line of trees above the rock face and saw a squirrel leap
from branch to branch. “Or walking through the woods.”

“I don’t think you’ll see her again,” Kelsey
said as she began coiling the rope. “You or anyone else.”

“You’ve said that before, and I’ve never
asked you why. So now I will. Just because no one we know has heard
from Nicky, what makes you think she’s dead?”

“I never said I thought she was dead. I
think she doesn’t exist anymore. Not as Nicky, anyway.”

Vin gave her a puzzled look. “So you think
she’s alive, but has a new identity?”

“It’s strange, I know. But they never found
Des Gowan’s body at Whites Ferry either. And I still believe she
survived.”

“I’m sticking with Melissa Gowan, not her
hippie-chick name, since MG was carved on the trunk of the killers.
The one I thought memorialized the dead.”

“Mel changed her name to Destiny,” Kelsey
said, winding the rope in loops around her bent arm, “during our
junior year in college. Just before she met Miles Garrett. After
that, there were times I felt I didn’t know her at all. She
sometimes had this expression that made you think her mind was a
hundred miles away. Like she was inhabited by someone else.” She
looked up from the rope to catch his eye. “That’s how she looked
when she shifted into reverse at Whites Ferry.”

“What?” Vin felt the back of his neck begin
to throb.

“I’ve never mentioned it to anyone before,”
she said, turning back to her coiling. “Whites Ferry wasn’t an
accident. Consciously or not, Des knew what she was doing. And I
still think she’s out there somewhere.”

Kelsey reached the end of the rope and began
to wrap it like a python around the gathered loops. “I think Nicky
survived the flood, too,” she said. “And she may eventually come
looking for Vincent Emory Illick again...” She tied off the rope
and looked at him and he noticed the faint scar on her temple,
“…but it will be as someone else.” Her gray-green irises flitted in
tiny oscillations as they had when Vin first met her on the towpath
at Swains. When they steadied, he saw reflected in them a glimmer
of Lee Fisher’s truth.

************

Thanks for reading SWAINS LOCK. While the
characters are imaginary, all of the places in the novel (with the
exception of a few renamed residential streets) are real, and the
devastating floods the book describes occurred on the dates
depicted in the story. If you enjoyed the novel, I’d greatly
appreciate a brief positive review on Amazon or Smashwords.

The River Trilogy continues with BURYING
ZIMMERMAN, which stars the heroin dealer from SWAINS LOCK. You can
read the first few chapters of this sequel on my website, at
http://rivertrilogy.com
.

If you're interested in learning more about
the history of the C&O Canal, I encourage you to track down the
books that Vin consulted in the story, all but one of which exist
and are informative resources. Here's the list:

The Great National Project: A History of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
by Walter S. Sanderlin, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1946, 2005

Home on the Canal
by Elizabeth Kytle, The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983

The C&O Canal Companion
by Mike High, The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal: Pathway to the
Nation's Capital by Thomas F. Hahn, The Scarecrow Press, Inc.,
1984

Images of America: The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal by
Mary H. Rubin, Arcadia Publishing, 2003

Most of all, I encourage you to visit the
C&O Canal National Historical Park. Walk the towpath and stop
to examine the broken locks, waste weirs, and boarded-up
lockhouses. Read the informative display signs that the Park
Service continues to add and you'll get a sense for the people and
pace of the canal era. Visit Great Falls (on the Maryland or the
Virginia side) and imagine a young George Washington standing where
you stand, squinting upriver as he pondered how to bring Ohio
Valley barges past those thundering falls. And if you feel an
ephemeral chill or sense an unseen presence as you walk back toward
the park entrance, remember that Grace's spirit still roams those
woods.

Edward A. Stabler